Gordon Matta-Clark

works and collected writings

Thomas E. Crow

Judith Russi Kirshner

Christian Kravagna

The definitive monograph on the unique and hugely influential artist.

Splitting : [November 20-December 15, 1990

Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.)

Whitney Museum of American Art

Elisabeth Sussman

This comprehensive book incorporates important new information from the Matta-Clark archive, presenting a compelling reappraisal of the unique beauty and radical nature of Matta-Clark's punnings, plans, performances, and interventions evident in the many media in which he worked.

You are the Measure

Gordon Matta Clark

Peter Noever

Works by Gordon Matta-Clark : 17 November 1997-18 January 1998, Schindler House L.A.

Anarchitecture

Gloria Moure

Splitting

The Films of Gordon Matta-Clark

City Slivers and Fresh Kills

Bruce Jenkins

A landmark work by Gordon Matta-Clark, examined as an "act of communication" about sustainability and the public role of art.

Conical Intersect

Gordon Matta-Clark, scion and rebel, died at 35 in 1978 and has since become a cult figure of late-twentieth-century art. Born in New York and trained in architecture at Cornell, his work broke the boundaries between sculpture and architecture, photography and film, performance and installation, and -above all- the permanent and the transitory. This book, conceived and based on the gradual opening of Matta-Clark's archives at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, collects -for first time- his main writings (including Art Cards and Notebooks) and interviews, with a wide selection of reference works.

Works and Collected Writings

James Attlee

Lisa Le Feuvre

An important new book that considers the life and work of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) whose influence, despite his tragically short career, is ever more pervasive. Central to the explosion of creativity in New York's SoHo in the 1970s, Matta-Clark turned his focus on the city itself, slicing through abandoned buildings to create works that were at once large-scale sculptural environments, social commentary and urban performance pieces.

The Space Between

An essential reference that provides new understanding of the thought processes of one of the most radical artists of the late twentieth century. Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) has never been an easy artist to categorize or to explain. Although trained as an architect, he has been described as a sculptor, a photographer, an organizer of performances, and a writer of manifestos, but he is best known for un-building abandoned structures. In the brief span of his career, from 1968 to his early death in 1978, he created an oeuvre that has made him an enduring cult figure. In 2002, when Gordon Matta-Clark’s widow, Jane Crawford, put his archive on deposit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, it revealed a new voice in the ongoing discussion of artist/architect Matta-Clark’s work: his own. Gwendolyn Owens and Philip Ursprung’s careful selection and ordering of letters, interviews, statements, and the now-famous art cards from the CCA as well as other sources deepens our understanding of one of the most original thinkers of his generation. Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook creates a multidimensional portrait that provides an opportunity for readers to explore and enjoy the complexity and contradiction that was Gordon Matta-Clark.

An Archival Sourcebook

Pamela M. Lee

The short, quirky career of an American original is analyzed in this unique book, exploring the building cuts, loft design, and restaurant architecture he experimented with in the 1970s.

The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark

Object to be Destroyed

A landmark work byGordon Matta-Clark, examined as an “act of communication” aboutsustainability and the public role of art.

CP138 Gordon Matta-Clark : Readings of the Archive by Yann Chateigné, Hila Peleg, Kitty Scott

Documenting the artist’s extraordinary accomplishments as a draftsman, this publication originates from the 2015 solo presentation at David Zwirner, New York, entitled Energy & Abstraction, organized in close collaboration with Jane Crawford and Jessamyn Fiore from the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. Well known for his radical “anarchitectural” interventions throughout the 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark was always deeply, though less publicly, committed to drawing. His works on paper—which span three-dimensional reliefs, calligraphy, and notebook entries—capture the interdisciplinary spirit that defined the art world in the 1970s. Intricate and concise, they testify to his interest in the crossovers between visual and performance arts, as well as the broader integration within his oeuvre of the natural and built environment. This catalogue presents in vibrant detail selections from Matta-Clark’s Cut Drawings, Energy Rooms, Energy Trees, and his own “calligraphy,” many of which have never been published. Perhaps the best known of the group, the Cut Drawings explore parallel, smaller-format versions of his physical interventions in architecture; slicing meticulously through several layers of paper, gesso, or cardboard, Matta-Clark created sculptural flat works that emphasized the voids created by the extraction of matter. Drawings with his own “calligraphy” emphasize the medium of drawing as an independent form. Abstract letters make up a code that remains indecipherable, but points toward a visionary longing to invent new languages and structures of experience. Some of the most elaborate and colorful compositions include trees, several of which refer explicitly to Matta-Clark’s Tree Dance performance at Vassar College in upstate New York in 1971. In full-color plates, the reader can see the physical structure of his trees “dissolving” into kinetic energy and, in some drawings, becoming reduced to a multitude of arrows. Near-abstract tree shapes also incorporate his calligraphic marks, with branches constructed from imaginary letters, again emphasizing the importance of language to a new visual experience. Matta-Clark’s notebooks, which he often insisted on completing in a single sitting, are presented in elegantly curated groups. Combining elements of Surrealist automatic drawing with an interest in choreography, these works appealed to performance artists at the time—including Laurie Anderson and Trisha Brown. This unparalleled presentation of Matta-Clark’s drawings is accompanied by new and exciting scholarship by Briony Fer, as well as a conversation between Jessamyn Fiore and contemporary artist Sarah Sze; it marks a major contribution to the literature on this highly influential artist.

Gordon Matta-Clark

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